Fastlinks

What is a Fastlink?

"Fastlinks" are a database capability which can be described as a form of "deep linking." Essentially, this is the ability to create a URL (= hot link) which can burrow into a database TGIF and retrieve a specific record or set of records in a specific presentation format, without the user necessarily being aware of what has occurred. To the user, it is "just another hot link."

Fastlinks can be used in a wide range of very non-traditional-TGIF ways. The examples below are intended only to demonstrate some ways in which it will be possible to use this capability; it is intended primarily as a brainstorming aid.

Why link to the TGIF record using a fastlink instead of directly to the item itself?

Revision and other relevant notes are incoporated into the TGIF record, including cross-links to other editions or related records.

Avoid future dead links - URL's within the TGIF record that link to the full-text of the item will be maintained by TIC through TGIF. TGIF becomes a central "link maintainer" for the discipline's literature.

TGIF includes print as well as online literature, allowing most of the turf literature to be linkable. As additional older material is made available online in the future, these materials will then automatically be linked via the TGIF record.

An entire search set can be (depending on the search done) a dynamic, self-updating file.

Fastlink Generator Scripts allow quick access to specific records and search sets, and can make using TGIF faster, easier, and less complicated!